Bakken
<p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">motherfrakkers</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see bomb train exxon api</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/09/exxon-tapes-american-petroleum-institutes-lobbying-oil-trains/">https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/09/exxon-tapes-american-petroleum-institutes-lobbying-oil-trains/</a></font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senior ExxonMobil lobbyists were recently exposed by undercover reporting from <a href="https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2021/07/01/exxon-undercover-pfas-plastic-chemicals/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">UnEarthed</a>, an investigative journalism project of Greenpeace, which captured footage of the employees explaining how the oil giant influences policy makers using trade associations like the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/american-petroleum-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">American Petroleum Institute (API)</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The undercover footage revealed Exxon lobbyists boasting about wins for the company under the Trump administration and admitting to continued efforts to sow doubt about climate change and undermine action to tackle the crisis. <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />The recordings also confirmed the findings of years of DeSmog research on API’s lobbying tactics. “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not,” <b>Keith McCoy,</b> a senior director in ExxonMobil’s Washington, D.C. government affairs team, told the undercover reporter Lawrence Carter. “Did we join some of these ‘shadow groups’ to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing illegal about that. You know, we were looking out for our investments; we were looking out for our shareholders.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These revelations exposed by UnEarthed and <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-exxonmobils-lobbying-war-on-climate-change-legislation" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">first published by Channel 4 News</a> help shed light on API’s lobbying strategies, particularly when it comes to transporting oil by rail. The rise of fracking in 2009 created a transportation problem in U.S. regions like North Dakota’s Bakken Shale, which lacked sufficient pipelines and other infrastructure to move the sudden glut of oil. In response, the oil industry started ramping up transport of its products by train around 2012, but several high-profile fires and explosions of these oil trains also followed, starting in July 2013.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">DeSmog’s coverage of the years-long process of creating <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2015/05/01/new-oil-rail-regulations-are-big-win-oil-and-rail-industries-won-t-stop-bomb-trains/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">new oil train regulations</a> in the wake of 2013’s deadly Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, oil train disaster documented the tactics described by Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy — and revealed just how effective the company is at watering down efforts by regulatory agencies to protect the public and environment</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. [twt pix]</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">after years of <a href="https://www.desmog.com/oil-rail-following-bomb-trains/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">covering the regulatory process</a> governing oil trains, one fact stood out: API was almost always leading the process</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Even though the process was supposed to be about improving rail safety, the oil industry played the dominant role. Exxon representatives were rarely seen in the many public Congressional or regulatory agency hearings and did not take a public role in fighting the regulations. However, as DeSmog reported, Exxon was meeting in private with federal regulators and arguing against stronger regulations on oil trains</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span></font></p><div id="DC-note-2044177" class="DC-embed DC-embed-note DC-note-container DC-embed-enhanced" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); max-width: 750px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Much of my book <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2019/07/09/bomb-trains-oil-rail-threat-book/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Bomb Trains: How Industry Greed and Regulatory Failure Put the Public at Risk</span></a> highlights how API successfully uses “The Hill” — i.e. Congress — to stop regulation and describes the central role the organization plays, as noted in this passage in which <b>National Transportation Safety Board Chair Deborah Hersman asks API representative Lee Johnson when safer rail tank cars could be expected</b>:</font></font></p><div id="DC-note-2044179" class="DC-embed DC-embed-note DC-note-container DC-embed-enhanced" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); max-width: 750px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2014/07/09/oil-rail-classification-standards-being-driven-american-petroleum-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Congressional hearings</a>, at <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2016/11/28/regulators-consider-crude-oil-volatility-limits-would-require-oil-stabilization/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">rail industry conferences</a>, and in funding supposedly <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2014/07/09/oil-rail-classification-standards-being-driven-american-petroleum-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">independent studies</a> of the issue, it was always API dictating what happened on “The Hill.” </font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As revealed by UnEarthed, <b>Exxon lobbyist McCoy spelled out how it works in the recently released recordings: </b></font></font></font></font></font></p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; position: relative; margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; padding: 0px 35px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“So you start to build out a coalition of associations. Now, companies feed into that privately where we have meetings, but the public face of it are the associations: they go to the Hill, they have these conversations.” </b></font></font></font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Exxon was rarely mentioned in the oil-by-rail regulatory process even though API was omnipresent. However, as McCoy noted, Exxon is directing API.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> On the tapes, he described how it worked, saying, “And so the API staff person who worked on that issue, We’d say, you know, ‘Hey Tom, you need to go to The Hill and you need to have a conversation with the committee.’” </span></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is similar to what Scott Sheffield, CEO of U.S. oil company Pioneer Resources, said in 2020 when <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2020/03/27/shale-bailout-trump-oil-exxon-strategic-petroleum-reserve/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">he told CNBC </a>that it was Exxon <b>leading discussions on a possible industry bailout and that Exxon “controls the API.</b>” <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Exxon’s Slide from </span><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2015/01/15/oil-rail-reality-watch-what-they-do-not-what-they-say/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">a 2014 presentation</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Arguing Against Thicker Tank Shells for Oil Tank Cars</span></font></p><div id="DC-note-2044181" class="DC-embed DC-embed-note DC-note-container DC-embed-enhanced" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); max-width: 750px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the tapes released by UnEarthed, McCoy also mentioned another tactic, in this instance regarding the “forever chemicals” PFAS, that trade groups like <b>API also employed to fight oil-by-rail safety regulations and even have repealed the regulations that the Department of Transportation approved in 2015</b>. <a href="https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2021/07/01/exxon-undercover-pfas-plastic-chemicals/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">As UnEarthed reported</a>:</font></font></p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; position: relative; margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; padding: 0px 35px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“McCoy claimed that an Exxon-instigated advocacy push had delayed tighter regulations on PFAS by successfully lobbying for a government study of the chemicals.”</font></font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These studies are often commissioned by Congress, take years to complete, and then often are used to prevent or repeal regulations. <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><b>The reason oil-by-rail needed new regulations is because oil trains kept blowing up when they derailed — with <a href="https://www.sightline.org/2021/02/26/a-timeline-of-oil-train-derailments-in-pictures/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">five oil train derailments </a>resulting in large fires</b> by the time API representative Lee Johnson began downplaying the risks of these trains in the 2014 hearings on new regulations In the idyllic town of Lac-Mégantic, that disaster resulted in the death of 47 people. Those people died because the Bakken oil being transported by rail is highly volatile and flammable. The science is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZmGHlkHxSA" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">very clear on this.</a></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>This week was the <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/07/05/eight-years-after-the-lac-mgantic-disaster-the-window-for-a-recurrence-is-still-open.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">8th anniversary </a>of the Lac-Mégantic disaster. Yet today, that highly volatile and flammable oil is still being moved by rail, in part because API fought regulations and won. How? By pushing for more studies of the issue as a delay tactic</b>. </font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">A year after the 2013 accident, oil industry associations funded two studies which were held up as evidence by API CEO Jack Gerard that the volatile Bakken oil shouldn’t be regulated to reduce the risk of explosions and fires in derailments.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span></font></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It is essential to separate fact from fiction as we work to enhance the safe transportation of crude oil,” API CEO Jack Gerard <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2014/07/09/oil-rail-classification-standards-being-driven-american-petroleum-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">said in 2014,</a> <b>“Multiple studies have now debunked the idea that Bakken crude is meaningfully different than other crudes.</b>”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">This statement has no basis in science. But it worked to stop proposed regulation and it was helped by a study requested by Congress that was released in mid-2105. The study was immediately touted by API as more proof that Bakken oil should not be regulated</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The API <a href="https://www.api.org/news-policy-and-issues/news/2015/03/24/doe-crude-by-rail-report-highlights-impo" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">press release</a> at the time stated: “The Department of Energy found no data showing correlation between crude oil properties and the likelihood or severity of a fire caused by a derailment.”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><b>This video shows two members of Congress <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2015/04/23/congresswoman-declares-pipeline-and-oil-rail-regulatory-system-fundamentally-broken/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">reading prepared statements</a> in a hearing that used API’s language about that study’s conclusion, word for word [</b>vid hardy]</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">it should be no surprise that these tactics, first employed by the tobacco industry, were also adopted by other lobbyists, including oil and rail industry lobbyists. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">As DeSmog reported, in 2017 the rail industry was able to get regulations requiring modern braking systems for trains repealed based on another <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2017/12/10/trump-admin-repeal-oil-train-safety-rule-electronically-controlled-pneumatic-brakes/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">congressionally requested study</a>. This government-funded study, however, did not accurately reflect the science on the issue. In this case, the rail industry had even touted the known science for years before reversing course and insisting to the public and lawmakers that it was not valid. </font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2016, Suzanne Lemieux, a representative of the American Petroleum Institute, spoke at an energy-by-rail conference. She argued against the idea that the volatile oil being transported by rail needed to be regulated in a presentation titled, “Crude Oil Volatility: Myth vs. Fact.” </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Her message was quite clear. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I would say that all of these conversations about [how] Bakken is inherently more dangerous, it’s more volatile, etcetera, etcetera, those things from a chemical properties perspective just aren’t true. <b>And so we in the oil and gas industry see this as a very dangerous conversation.”</b></font></font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Forty seven people died because of the oil industry’s dangerous product. However, API took the position that even discussing how to avoid a repeat of the oil train explosion at Lac-Megantic was too dangerous of a conversation to have. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And it worked. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DeSmog contacted Exxon and the American Petroleum Institute inquiring if the two coordinated efforts to influence oil-by-rail regulations. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As a member-driven organization, we collaborate across our membership on a wide range of policy issues, from advancing smart and effective regulations and strong standards for rail safety to <b>advocating for lower-carbon solutions to tackle climate change,</b>” said API spokeswoman Bethany Aronhalt via email. “We also continue to advocate for modernized pipeline infrastructure, which is the safest most efficient way to<b> deliver the energy Americans rely on every single day.</b>” </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exxon did not respond other than to ask for specific questions, which were provided, but not answered. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">For much greater detail on how the oil-by-rail regulatory process unfolded, read Chapter 4, “Follow the Money,” of my book <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Bomb Trains</em>, which dives into API’s role in the process. <a href="https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Chapter-4-Follow-The-Money.pdf">https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Chapter-4-Follow-The-Money.pdf</a></font></font></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">exxon bomb train 2016?</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20985294-exxon-oira#document/p1/a2044177" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20985294-exxon-oira#document/p1/a2044177</a></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cf antonia juhaz bakken bailout?<b> oil -40$ bakken</b>, 200b$ debt; in 2008 oil 150$, many poor cty could not afford, helped trigger Gt Recession?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/14/new-paper-reveals-rail-industry-was-leader-climate-denial-efforts">https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/14/new-paper-reveals-rail-industry-was-leader-climate-denial-efforts</a></div><div>
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</div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">b/c of dapl shut by ct?</font></div><div><div class="views-field views-field-body" style="overflow: inherit;"><div class="field-content"><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> July 6, Reuters <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pipeline-energy-transfer-rail/dakota-access-pipeline-shutdown-may-revive-oil-by-rail-industry-idUSKBN2472V5" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">published an article </a>on the potential for a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">resurgence of moving crude oil from the Bakken region of North Dakota across the country by rail, due to a judge’s decision to shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline over<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/07/09/energy-transfer-boasberg-court-order-dapl-shutdown" style="text-decoration-line: none;"> permit issues</a>.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">July 6 also was the seventh anniversary of the disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, when a train full of <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/07/11/lac-megantic-canada-oil-train-disaster-could-happen-again" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Bakken oil from North Dakota </a>derailed and exploded — resulting in 47 fatalities and the destruction of much of downtown Lac-Mégantic. </font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">720 dapl</font></p><div class="views-field views-field-body" style="overflow: inherit;"><div class="field-content"><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> July 6, a federal judge <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/06/federal-judge-orders-dakota-access-pipeline-to-close-349748" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ordered</a> the shutdown of the <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/energy-transfer-partners-bakken-oil-pipeline-through-iowa" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Dakota Access pipeline</a> (<span class="caps">DAPL</span>) by August 5. </span>The move follows a March judgment that ordered the pipeline to undergo a more thorough environmental review.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>However, Energy Transfer, the pipeline's parent company, later revealed that the company was continuing to offer deals to oil companies to ship their product on <span class="caps">DAPL</span> during times when the pipeline is slated to be shut down</b>. Today, the legal battle moved towards the <span class="caps">U.S.</span> Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, after the judge <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Motion%20to%20Stay%20Denied%20-%20DAPL%20July%209.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">denied</a> a request to freeze the shutdown order.</font><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/07/09/energy-transfer-boasberg-court-order-dapl-shutdown" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-align="text-align" right="right" text-transform="text-transform" uppercase="uppercase">READ MOR</a><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" text-align="text-align" right="right" text-transform="text-transform" uppercase="uppercase">E</span></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/07/12/return-bakken-bomb-trains" style="text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase; outline: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MOR</font></a></p></div></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/07/21/three-percenters-militia-bakken-oil-oneok-domestic-terrorism" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/07/21/three-percenters-militia-bakken-oil-oneok-domestic-terrorism</font></a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx pix twt quite long</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Whose Allegiance? </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Three Percenters Militia Working in Bakken </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Oil Patch Raises Concerns of Domestic Terrorism Risk</span></b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Justin Nobel • Tuesday, July 21, 2020 </font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Three Percenters, a loosely organized group of far-right militants, appear to have established a significant presence in North Dakota’s <b>Bakken oilfield, one of the most productive oilfields in the nation</b>. “There is a lot of membership in the oil and gas industry up there,” says Matt Marshall, a Three Percenter running for state legislature in Washington. “The fact that you have a lot of Three Percenters working in the oilfields of North Dakota is not surprising.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Three Percenters are so named for the dubious historical claim that only three percent of American colonists took up arms in the Revolutionary War. Their adherents have frequently been involved with incidents of ?armed protests, hate speech, and ?threatening behavior across the U.S., and the group’s members have shown up prominently at recent protests related to both pandemic response measures and police brutality.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In April, Marshall, wearing a colonial tricorn hat with bullets strapped to the side, and a Hawaiian shirt, helped lead a coronavirus stay-home order protest at his state’s capitol in Olympia, Washington.</b> Hawaiian shirts are described by the Anti-Defamation League as a coded reference to coming civil war, although Marshall denies the link.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He says he is aware of Three Percenters who are working in oilfields in Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Alaska. And also according to Marshall, top officials with two North Dakota chapters, the North Dakota United Patriots Three Percenters and North Dakota Three Percenter Originals, work in the oil and gas industry.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We are mostly blue-collar workers who want to put in a hard day’s labor, support our family, pay a limited amount of taxes to get the services we require and at the end of the day be left alone,” says Marshall. “I don’t think there is any concern about having a bunch of <b>threepers </b>working in that industry,” referring to an alternate name for the group.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But points of significant concern emerged in a multi-month DeSmog investigation that involved interviews with former Department of Homeland Security and FBI officials, and local residents of North Dakota, who live in a state still pumping out more than a million barrels of oil a day.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to a whistleblower who contacted DeSmog, Three Percenters have established a prominent presence at a Bakken oil and gas facility regarded as critical infrastructure by the Department of Homeland Security. Militia-related patches, flags, and artwork have popped up across the Bakken oil patch, and a thriving gun culture among its workers has led to a </span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mad Max-mentality of chaos plaguing residents of the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.</span></b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While federal security agencies and their partners have prioritized focus on the energy industry and produced a raft of reports in the past two decades on other risks to the nation’s critical infrastructure, such as cyber security, natural disasters, and environmental activism, right-wing militia groups appear to be escaping close scrutiny.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“It certainly seems like a security vacuum,” Michael German, a fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice, told DeSmog when informed about our reporting. German is a former FBI special agent who specialized in domestic terrorism and covert operations.</span> “The FBI characterizes itself as a domestic terrorism agency and has been outspoken about prioritizing ecoterrorism as a threat, which is ridiculous because there are no deaths with any of the environmental threats,” he said. “Yet somehow there does not appear to be an attempt to find out what the infiltration is of anti-government militia groups, and that is problematic.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>At the same time, state legislators across the country, backed by the notoriously ultra-conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, have been devising laws to target environmental activists as terrorists.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“The FBI’s approach of de-emphasizing investigations of white supremacist and right-wing militia violence while targeting resources at social justice movements and calling that extremism has existed for some time,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) National Security Project.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“What militias like this do is conduct surveillance and find facilities they will either need to take over or attack when ‘shit hits the fan.’”</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It’s an approach that continues to play out at this very moment. In the midst of protests against the police killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans, President Trump has fanned the flames with tweets about “shooting” looters, calling MAGA supporters into action, and saying he intends to designate the amorphous leftwing anti-fascism movement Antifa as a terrorist organization.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Meanwhile, reports of right-wing militia members bringing weapons to protests allegedly in order to transform this moment into civil war have surfaced online. On May 31, <b>Marshall’s group sent perhaps a dozen members to a small town north of Seattle in response to rumors of an Antifa threat that never materialized.</b> And <b>neo-Nazis, through online networks, have suggested to followers that with police forces spread thin, the present moment would be an ideal one to strike energy infrastructure targets.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DeSmog’s investigation indicates a culture of guns and paranoia has worked its way deep into the heart of <b>America’s third richest oilfield.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Domestic Terrorism Experts Troubled by Militia’s Oilfield Presence</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Lehto is a 54-year-old former plant operator at the Lonesome Creek Gas Processing Plant, outside Watford City, North Dakota. During his tenure there in 2016, he says coworkers would “talk about automatic weapons all the time,” gather in common spaces to watch social media videos that featured demonstrations of people firing sub-automatic machine guns, leave articles of clothing with Three Percenter insignia lying around the workplace, and regularly wear the militia’s notorious patches, which typically contain the Roman numeral III, sometimes placed over a darkened American flag. During one conversation, he says a coworker spoke about hijacking a commercial jet.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Lehto says the comment may well have been in jest, it conveyed a “habit of thinking” that was worrisome and was part of his decision to eventually leave his job at the natural gas processing plant. “The constellation of issues around being a Three Percenter was probably the number one topic of conversation at work,” says Lehto. “These guys are basically supportive of the idea of some sort of eventual civil war in the United States of America.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Lehto</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Lehto, a ONEOK gas plant employee from 2015 to 2016, shown in 2019. Credit: DeSmog]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Daryl Johnson, an expert on right-wing militia groups who from 2004 to 2010 served as the Department of Homeland Security’s senior domestic terrorism analyst, told DeSmog that this was the first information he has received of right-wing militia presence in the oil and gas industry. He was deeply alarmed.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“These are operationally minded people with a paranoid worldview that believe at some point there is going to be a societal collapse,” said Johnson, who authored the 2012 book, Right-Wing Resurgence: How A Domestic Terrorist Threat Is Being Ignored. “What militias like this do is conduct surveillance and find facilities they will either need to take over or attack when ‘shit hits the fan.’ When they are working, they are also thinking about what else they would need to do to bring the plant to its knees. They may follow the order of their commander or act on a lone wolf instinct, and their allegiance lies not with their employer but with the militia, although they might think they are doing something righteous and good for the country.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lehto says that during the day shift, more than half of the 20 to 25 workers stationed at Lonesome Creek would either be wearing Three Percenter regalia and openly supportive of the militia, or be workers that he considered to be sympathizers. Three Percenters came to work there from North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas, says Lehto.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I heard one Three Percenter expressing frustration and astonishment that HR did not hire his recommendation for a fellow Three Percenter, saying, ‘He is qualified, he has a great resume, and he is a Three Percenter, I just don’t understand why they turned him down,’” says Lehto. “Implied was that he had prior success with this.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the night shift Lehto managed the $600 million plant with just two other workers, one of whom was an active Three Percenter, the other a sympathizer. “I was just being constantly reminded of the Three Percenter presence,” says Lehto.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Protester at a confederate memorial in Louisiana waves a Three Percenter flag]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Orleans, August 19, 2017. A man waves a Three Percenter flag as counter-protesters and protesters clash at the conclusion of the march organized by Take ‘Em Down NOLA,” an event held in solidarity with Charlottesville, days after the deadly Unite the Right rally. Credit: ©2020 Julie Dermanksy]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I find it concerning that it is not just one, or two, or three, it is more like half the plant that are Three Percenters or supporting them rhetorically,” says Johnson. “There is a threat capability calculation we use in intelligence —<b> capability plus intent equals threat,” </b>he continued.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> “The Three Percenters definitely have capability, and they definitely have made their intent known, and the fact that they have access is even more concerning. Having the insider knowledge of how that plant operates, where that gas comes from and where it is going is all information an adversary can use for maximum threat and maximum damage. They can sabotage the plant or pipelines running from it, which may not cause a lot of deaths but can disrupt the energy supply.”</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Furthermore, added Johnson, “There is also a counterintelligence threat. They have intel on critical infrastructure that, shall the need arise, they can share with people who don’t need to know.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A 2008 Department of Homeland Security report on insider threats to critical infrastructure says insider motivations can come from, “some combination of: revenge for a perceived wrong; radicalization for advancement of religious or ideological objectives; or simple illicit financial gain.” Companies who run infrastructure like energy pipelines may misunderstand insider risks and have a financial incentive to downplay them. “Insider incidents can cause lost credibility with shareholders, employees, and customers, and negatively effect to [sic] shareholder values,” the report states. “It appears corporate leadership neither completely appreciates the risk nor realizes the potential consequences.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Lonesome Creek plant is operated by the Oklahoma-based oil and gas service company, ONEOK, and came online in 2015 to process the growing surge of natural gas and natural gas liquids being pumped from the booming Bakken oilfields. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The plant, like all gas processing plants, is considered “critical infrastructure” by the Department of Homeland Security.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This designation goes back to the Patriot Act of 2001, which defines the term as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ONEOK headquarters in Tulsa, OK</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ONEOK is headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Credit: Joseph Wingenfeld, CC BY 2.0]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A risk assessment of the Lonesome Creek Plant by ONEOK says a “worst-case scenario” would involve “a release of 368,536 pounds of flammable mixture” from a large storage tank and <b>generate a wave of destruction more than a half-mile in radius.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the risk assessment states that ONEOK has “numerous controls to prevent such releases and to manage their consequences,” they are not described in the document. Silverio Caggiano, an Ohio Fire Chief who works regularly with the oil and gas industry and has more than two decades of experience related to Hazardous Materials and Weapons of Mass Destruction, laid out reasons for continued concern. “You would need to have a pretty good background in chemistry to do something specific with a certain gas based on its properties, but if you’ve got a bunch of guys there that are all in cahoots and they decide they want to take shit out, they can pretty much do anything they want,” said Caggiano. “A person working within the system knows how the system runs.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“From a security standpoint the Three Percenters are probably among the most worrisome groups … it is not whether there will be a right-wing attack, it is when.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In replies to specific questions by DeSmog, ONEOK did not describe what the “numerous controls” were at the Lonesome Creek facility intended to prevent a “worst-case scenario,” nor did the company respond to requests to speak with present workers at the plant. “ONEOK expects all of our employees to know and abide by our company policies and to embrace the company’s core values of Ethics, Quality, Diversity, Value and Service,” the company explained, in a statement to DeSmog. “ONEOK’s Violence-Free Workplace Policy prohibits violence, violent acts, and threats of violence. ONEOK has implemented numerous safety and security practices to safeguard our facilities and to comply with applicable law. Clearly, the scope and nature of many of these practices and safeguards must remain confidential. We support, cooperate, and frequently coordinate with federal, state, and local law enforcement to anticipate and plan for potential security events. Furthermore, ONEOK has worked with several state legislatures to enact legislation to protect energy infrastructure from hostile actions.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But Michael German, the Brennan Center for Justice fellow and former FBI special agent, pointed out that this legislation is typically enacted with environmentalist protest groups in mind, not militia-minded employees.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The American Legislative Exchange Council has crafted a “model” bill based on Oklahoma’s HB 1123, which calls for citizens to receive a felony sentencing, $100,000 fine, and/or 10 years in prison if their actions “willfully damage, destroy, vandalize, deface, or tamper with equipment in a critical infrastructure facility.</b>” The bill has been replicated across the country including in Ohio, Alabama, Kentucky, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Iowa, where reporting by DeSmog in 2018 revealed that corporate backers included Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and many other oil and gas and pipeline companies.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">People opposing the Dakota Access pipeline gather at Standing Rock in North Dakota, December 4, 2016.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline gather at Standing Rock in North Dakota, December 4, 2016. Credit: Joe Brusky, CC BY-NC 2.0]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI told DeSmog that the agency meets frequently with members of the private sector to make them aware of potential threats and to provide information on how to enhance their security.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We have no comment on threats to specific industries or any groups,” said an FBI spokesperson. “Our focus is not on membership in particular groups but on individuals who commit violence and criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI can never initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or the exercise of First Amendment rights.” </span> </font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>However such statements go against research done by the ACLU, which unearthed records indicating that in the early 2000s the FBI targeted environmental groups, animal rights groups, and anti-war groups in a way that violated their First Amendment rights.</b> A review of these episodes, published in 2010 by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, concluded that while the FBI did not target groups for investigation based on First Amendment activities, the basis for opening some of the investigations for certain individuals was “factually weak,” the FBI “extended the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis,” and “in a few instances the FBI improperly retained information.”...</font></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>The government’s apparent lack of attention on the issue is of concern to other watchdogs. “The U.S. government increasingly acts like a tool of fossil fuel companies and oligarchs,”</b> </span>Basav Sen, Director of the Climate Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive Washington, D.C. think tank, wrote last October. He added, “the slide into extractivist authoritarianism in the U.S. is part of a worldwide trend.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Sen pointed to a number of issues that promoted a linkup between the fossil fuels industry and the far right. Each group favors a hands-off approach to government meddling and regulation. And in a trend that has become more pronounced under the Trump administration, with its constant mention of the nation’s newfound fracking-led oil and gas dominance, support of the fossil fuels industry has been promoted as patriotic duty. Oil and gas industry workers are made to feel they are part of a great mission, says Sen, and those who critique them, such as pipeline protesters or climate marchers, are sworn enemies, or even terrorists. This enables the federal government to place individuals on watchlists and, as seen with </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Indigenous-led protests at Standing Rock and elsewhere has helped to encourage a dangerous operating environment in which </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">federal law enforcement has relied on outside groups, including actual militia members, to help with security work and law enforcement</span></b><b>.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>“As we head toward a renewable world and fossil fuels become less competitive, it makes perfect sense that the global elite and fossil fuels industry will turn to the far right, whether indirectly or directly, for protection,”</b> says Sen. “The fossil fuels industry is going to need escalating levels of subsidies to survive, and one form of subsidy is this massive tax-funded private security force.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Perhaps nowhere has the use of mercenary-like private security forces been more heavily employed than against Indigenous communities in the United States.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“If you throw a Three Percenter patch on you can stand in a government building with an assault rifle all damn day and nobody will bother you.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael German, the former FBI agent and security expert, says this is already occurring.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">“What we saw in North Dakota during Standing Rock is groups organized as professional companies doing security work for law enforcement agencies,” says German. “This is quite troubling. Furthermore, there have been situations, such as happened at a rally in <b>2017 in Portland, where militia members have actually been caught on film helping Department of Homeland Security officials arresting counter protesters.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Tensions with Oilfield Workers at the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation...</b></font></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div>=</div><div>permian only possible place to make $ frack vs bakken</div><div><div>
</div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">chevron got outbid by occid, walked away w/ 1 billion free? : chev api, exxon want no bailout covid for small co's so they can buy cheap</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">desmog 719</font></p><div class="views-field views-field-body" style="overflow: inherit;"><div class="field-content"><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">oil industry in North Dakota and Montana — home to the prolific Bakken Shale Formation — faces an “impossible choice.” That's according to a <a href="https://attorneygeneral.nd.gov/sites/ag/files/documents/MediaAttachments/2019-07-17-Petition-PHMSA.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">new petition</a> to federal regulators from the attorneys general of North Dakota and Montana,<b> in response to a Washington state law that aims to prevent trains hauling oil through the state from derailing and exploding.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That choice is to either remove the volatile components, such as butane, from Bakken crude oil before being loaded into rail tank cars, or send the volatile oil to other, harder-to-reach markets because — as the petition argues — removing the butane would cut into oil producers' profits, and almost 60 percent of the crude leaving North Dakota by rail goes to Washington refineries.<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/07/25/north-dakota-montana-fight-volatility-bakken-oil-rail#disqus_thread" data-disqus-identifier="node/13837" style="text-decoration-line: none; vertical-align: bottom; padding-top: 1px; display: inline !important;">t</a></font></p></div></div><div class="views-field views-field-view-node" style="text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="field-content"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/07/25/north-dakota-montana-fight-volatility-bakken-oil-rail" style="outline: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">READ MORE</font></a></span></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">congrat primary on crony</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But Energy Transfer did announce on October 22 that it is exploring the prospect of <a href="https://www.apnews.com/c55f6b5da64940e5ab446a77882037ff" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">boosting throughput capacity</a> for Dakota Access from 500,000 barrels to 570,000 barrels per day. Oil which flows into <b>Dakota Access comes primarily via <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/fracking-the-future/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) </a>in North Dakota's <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/7174" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Bakken Shale</a> basin</b>.</font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of the companies which has oil flowing through that pipeline, <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/15658" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Continental Resources</a>, was founded by its <span class="caps">CEO</span> <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/harold-hamm" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Harold Hamm</a>, a <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=Harold+Hamm&order=desc&sort=D" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">major donor</a> to President <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/donald-trump" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Donald Trump</a>'s 2016 presidential campaign and to his 2020 campaign via the America First Action Super-<span class="caps">PAC</span> and a maximum allowable individual contribution. Hamm has also given <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=Harold+Hamm&order=desc&sort=D" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">tens of thousands of dollars</a> to Republican Party congressional candidates for the 2018 midterm elections. </font></p><p style="margin: 1em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/19696" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Kelcy Warren</a>, the <span class="caps">CEO</span> and founder of Energy Transfer, also donated to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and has given <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=kelcy+warren&order=desc&sort=D" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">tens of thousands of dollars</a> to <span class="caps">GOP</span> congressional candidates for the 2018 midterm cycle. Energy Transfer, too, has donated <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2018&cmte=C00438754" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">tens of thousands</a> to Republican Party candidates for the 2018 election cycle. </font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://boldalliance.org/issues/keystonexl/</font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> ===</font>
<span style="font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 28px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); float: none; display: inline !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The senators -- nine Democrats and nine Republicans -- asked Obama to approve the pipeline because it will create jobs and reduce the need for oil from the Middle East. They were led by Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat and powerful chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican. Both senators represent the booming Bakken oil region.</font></span>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale</font></a>
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<font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Bakken formation</b><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span class="nowrap" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); white-space: nowrap;"><span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English" title="Help:IPA for English" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none !important;">/</a></span><span class="IPA nopopups"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key" title="Help:IPA for English" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none !important;"><span title="/ˈ/ primary stress follows" style=" border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted;">ˈ</span><span title="'b' in 'buy'" style=" border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted;">b</span><span title="/ɑː/ 'a' in 'father'" style=" border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted;">ɑː</span><span title="'k' in 'kind'" style=" border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted;">k</span><span title="/ən/ 'on' in 'button'" style=" border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: dotted;">ən</span></a></span><span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English" title="Help:IPA for English" style="background-image: none; text-decoration: none !important;">/</a></span></span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">is a</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_unit" title="Rock unit" class="mw-redirect" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">rock unit</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">from the</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Devonian" title="Late Devonian" class="mw-redirect" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Late Devonian</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">to</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Mississippian" title="Early Mississippian" class="mw-redirect" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Early Mississippian</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">age occupying about 200,000 square miles (520,000 km</span><sup style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em;">2</sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">) of the subsurface of the</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williston_Basin" title="Williston Basin" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Williston Basin</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> underlying parts of<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montana" title="Montana" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Montana</a>,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dakota" title="North Dakota" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">North Dakota</a>,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatchewan" title="Saskatchewan" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Saskatchewan</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitoba" title="Manitoba" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Manitoba</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. The formation was initially described by</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologist" title="Geologist" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">geologist</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">J.W. Nordquist in 1953.</span><sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>2<span>]</span></a></sup><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The formation is entirely in the subsurface, and has no surface outcrop. It is named after Henry Bakken, a farmer in</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tioga,_North_Dakota" title="Tioga, North Dakota" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">Tioga, North Dakota</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">who owned the land where the formation was initially discovered, in a boring for oil.</span><sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>3<span>]</span></a></sup></font>
<font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Besides being a widespread prolific</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_rock" title="Source rock" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">source rock</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">for</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum" title="Petroleum" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">oil</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">when thermally mature, there are also significant producible reserves of oil within the Bakken formation itself.</span><sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>4<span>]</span></a></sup><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Oil was first discovered within the Bakken in 1951, but past efforts to produce it have faced technical difficulties. In April 2008, a USGS report estimated the amount of recoverable oil using technology readily available at the end of 2007 within the Bakken Formation at 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels (680,000,000 m</span><sup style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em;">3</sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">), with a mean of 3.65 billion.</span><sup id="cite_ref-usgs.gov_5-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#cite_note-usgs.gov-5" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>5<span>]</span></a></sup><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The state of North Dakota also released a report that month which estimated that there are 2.1 billion barrels (330,000,000 m</span><sup style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em;">3</sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">) of technically recoverable oil in the Bakken.</span><sup id="cite_ref-money.netscape.cnn.com_6-0" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#cite_note-money.netscape.cnn.com-6" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>6<span>]</span></a></sup><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Various other estimates place the total reserves, recoverable and non-recoverable with today's technology, at up to 24 billion barrels. A recent estimate places the figure at 18 billion barrels.</span><sup id="cite_ref-7" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>7<span>]</span></a></sup><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);"><span class="Apple-converted-space" style=""> </span>In April 2013, the US Geological Survey released a new figure for expected ultimate recovery of 7.4 billion barrels of oil.</span><sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>8<span>]</span></a></sup></font>
<font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><b>The application of<span class="Apple-converted-space" style=""> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing" title="Hydraulic fracturing" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">hydraulic fracturing</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style=""> </span>and<span class="Apple-converted-space" style=""> </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_drilling" title="Directional drilling" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;">horizontal drilling</a><span class="Apple-converted-space" style=""> </span>technologies have caused a boom in Bakken production since 2000</b>. By the end of 2010 oil production rates had reached 458,000 barrels (72,800 m<sup style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1em;">3</sup>) per day outstripping the pipeline capacity to ship oil out of the Bakken.<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>9<span>]</span></a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-10" class="reference" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>10<span>]</span></a></sup><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span>The production technology gain has led a veteran industry insider to declare that the USGS estimates are too low.<sup id="cite_ref-11" class="reference" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 1em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; font-style: normal;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#cite_note-11" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;"><span>[</span>11<span>]</span></a></sup></font>
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<div id="toctitle" style=" direction: ltr; text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#Geology" style="text-align: left; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">Geology</span></font></a></div><ul style=" line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none; text-align: left;">
<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-2" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#Oil_and_gas" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><span class="tocnumber">2</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">Oil and gas</span></a>
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<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-3" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#Drilling_and_completion" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">2.1</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">Drilling and completion</span></font></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#History_of_Bakken_oil_resource_estimates" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><span class="tocnumber">2.2</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">History of Bakken oil resource estimates</span></a>
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<li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-5" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#Oil_in_place" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">2.2.1</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">Oil in place</span></font></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-6" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#Recoverable_oil" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">2.2.2</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">Recoverable oil</span></font></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-3 tocsection-7" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#Proved_reserves" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">2.2.3</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">Proved reserves</span></font></a></li>
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<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-8" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#History_of_Bakken_Oil" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">2.3</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">History of Bakken Oil</span></font></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-9" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#Exploration_and_production" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">2.4</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">Exploration and production</span></font></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-10" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#Oil_and_gas_infrastructure" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">2.5</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">Oil and gas infrastructure</span></font></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-11" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#Effects_of_the_boom" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">2.6</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">Effects of the boom</span></font></a></li>
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<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-12" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#See_also" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">3</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">See also</span></font></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-13" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#References" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">4</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">References</span></font></a></li>
<li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-14" style=" margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Shale#External_links" style="text-decoration: none; background-image: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><span class="tocnumber">5</span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="toctext">External links</span></font></a></li>
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